Red
by Moonblade
Summary: What if Percy didn't want to be a Weasley anymore?
1. Dying

A/N: Just a short Percy introspective I wrote in Physics.  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own Percy or anything affiliated with Harry Potter **sniff**  
  
He stared at his face in the mirror. His reflection didn't smile or wave like most people's but merely looked out of the glass solemnly. His face was pale, making his freckles stand out more. He lifted his left hand and brushed his freckle stained cheek, grimacing. They were Weasley freckles. Marking him clearly as one of the loud vivacious members of the Weasley clan. Except that he wasn't. He didn't belong with his brash brothers and sisters. He didn't belong anywhere.  
  
He eyes traveled up his face to his red hair. His hand followed and ran its fingers through the wiry mass. He scowled. He hated his unruly mop more than the freckles. It more than the freckles chained him to the Weasley name. Percy didn't want to be a Weasley anymore. He was tired of blending into this brother's shadows. He was tired of the piteous glances that screamed sympathy that he hadn't lived up to his potential. He was just tired.  
  
His hand tore away from his hair and grabbed the wand resting on the dresser before him. His reflection glared out at the glass at him. He scowled at it. His freckles and horribly flaming hair. He couldn't get rid of the hated spots but his hair…that he could change. His hands were steady as he raised the wand to his face. Taking a deep breath he spoke in a quiet firm voice.  
  
"Crinis Mutatio." Percy gaped fearfully into the mirror.  
  
His hair was brown. Not an auburn or a light brown but simple mousy brown. Plain, like his personality. He turned his head from side to side, admiring his nondescript appearance.  
  
He smiled, feeling freer than he had since he had been old enough to recognize the pride in his father's voice whenever he spoke of Bill or Charlie. His shoulders straightened as if released from an invisible burden.  
  
After making sure his robes were wrinkle free he walked out of his bedroom. He felt the mad urge to whistle and because he was no longer Percy Weasley he did.  
  
A/N: So should I write more? Please review and tell me. If you think it should, any suggestions for further plot developments would be appreciated. 


	2. Leaving

A/N: Well I finally continued. I know this chapter is short, but this story seems to lend itself to them. 

Disclaimer: Percy and his family are not mine. I'd like to think that this scene below is, however.  

Percy stared at the glass lying bleeding on the kitchen floor.  The wine, which had previously filled it, seeped along the gaps in the tile, staining them red.  

            "Your…hair!" His mother gasped, dashing to him, not even bothering to avoid the glass, which crunched painfully beneath her feet.  

            She brought one hand to his head, her fingers hovering just above the now brown waves before jerking to her own hair and then finally rested upon his cheek, cool and trembling.  

            "Why?" she whispered, her voice hoarse.  

            Percy shoved his glasses up his nose, as if to protect his thoughts from seeping out his eyes.  He forced himself to look into his mother's eyes and watch them fill with tears as he said. "Because I was tired off being one of you."  

            Her lips parted and her face crumbled as the weight of that sentence fell upon her shoulders.  "One of us?"  She said, indignation weaving through her words.  "What was wrong with being 'one of us'?" 

            "Nothing." He lied. "I'm…just not."

            "Like hell you're not!" She snapped, all of her hurt and confusion willingly drowned out by anger.  

            "Moth-" Percy's cut off his chastisement over his mother's language with the thought that he didn't need to get irritated by cursing.  He wasn't that person any longer. "Mother," he said again, this time in a fragilely calm voice. "I never fit in." 

            "Percy," the pain was flooding into his mother's eyes again.

            "I didn't." He insisted, struggling to keep his voice level.  The rejection Percy had felt was irrelevant. "I tried, but I just don't fit." 

            His mother said nothing and Percy saw the truth of his words in his mother's eyes, however hard she might try to deny it.  He knew this should hurt, his mother admitting that the thing he'd been working towards for countless years was hopeless, but he felt strangely detached.  As though some invisible guillotine had severed him from his family and all the feelings he'd ever had for them.  The blade was too sharp to sting, yet.  

            "I'm moving out." He finally whispered.  

            "Where?" she asked, concern falling easily into her well-worn face.  

            "I don't know." He admitted, his hand moving to the back of his neck unconsciously.

            "Percy, that's hardly like you." She gazed at him intently, as if trying to see the secrets hidden behind the thick lenses of his glasses.  

            "I know." He replied, a small grin removing some of the shadows from his face.            

A/N: There you go. Think this should continue or should the new Percy remain in limbo?  And thanks to all who reviewed and got me to write this.    


	3. Seeing

Disclaimer: I own nothing, not even my mind. 

A/N: So here is next equally short chapter.  Sorry for delay, but I can only write this when I am in a certain mood. Which as you can tell does not strike me all that often I think the next chapter should be a lot quicker in coming, but knowing life it might not.  So hope you enjoy or like or whatever.  

Percy gasped as he shot awake.  The blackness crashed around him as his dream faded into the night.  His right hand instinctively reached for the glasses he normally kept on his bedside table but met with only air and then the edge of the bed, his palm making a dull thunking sound that echoed strangely through the room.  Stinging faintly the fingers curled through the darkness for a moment before holding still above the ground. 

He no longer had glasses and had no bedside table to keep them on.  He was no longer home.  He no longer had a home.  He let his hand once again fall to the bed's edge, focusing on the slight pain the contact made.   

He inhaled and felt the air move into his lungs and through his blood.  It had a different timbre then his old room's atmosphere.  It was somehow not as comforting, foreign. Even the nighttime felt foreign here.  The darkness didn't cling to his skin in quite the same way. But actually, it was he who was the foreigner.  Intruder in someone's discarded room, in someone's abandoned life. But it would be his life soon. He would make it his.  

He untangled his sheets from his sweaty legs and drew them around himself, shivering into their comforting familiarity.  He'd thought that this was going to be difficult, but it wasn't.  Just different.  Sighing, Percy collapsed back, only to jump again when a shriek sounded from beneath him.  It was just the bed creaking, he reassured himself.  His old bed hadn't done that, though.  And it had sagged in the middle. This mattress was unyieldingly firm. 

Percy tossed, shifting when the mattress dug into his elbows or knees.  Finally he grew tired of moving and simply stared at the blackness above him, waiting for it to fade.  Waiting for the cracked ceiling of his new apartment to come into focus.  Waiting for his new life to begin.

A/N: All done! I know not much has happened, but I really wanted to build this.  Also should there be a romance? Any thoughts as to who and how would be most appreciated.  


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